Your assignment for today: Learn more about Lisa Shatzky.

It's a strange thing, coming from that educational discipline where everything printed in the school primer was deemed to have more worth than the thoughts in your own head, and then to discover in later years that there are writers out there who not only write with genuine feeling but who actually reflect one's own sensitivities. We find that we are allowed to be human, and uncertain, and imperfect.




One such discovery occurred earlier this week with the arrival of The Antigonish Review - that wonderfully eclectic compilation supported by St. Francis Xavier University and Canadian cultural institutions. On Page 94, I was drawn to a poem entitled "Titanic" and opening with these lines:

I don't know which part I would have played
but it's the violin players I'm drawn to,
the ones who stood on the crumbling deck
and offered their music to the panic
and mayhem.

The poem (I won't reproduce it here because I want you to buy the magazine) goes on to consider our response to the ultimate emergency and our thoughts as we face the inevitable.

HOW WOULD WE REACT ... OR LIKE TO THINK WE WOULD REACT?

In about forty lines, I think it reassures the reader that he, she, you or me, are all much alike in aspiring to something beyond the probable - but that it's the ideal that counts. Even in our cowardice and despair, by simply recognizing the worth of courage, we help honour exist.

I like Lisa Shatky's poem very much and I intend to find more of her work - which I think is honest and genuine. And if you feel the same way, you might like to support the Antigonish Review: details at antigonishreview.com

They'll send you a sample copy for seven bucks - which is about the price of a cup of tea and a tabloid. Or if you're really well-heeled, you could take a trip to Nova Scotia yourself this summer and pick up a copy personally.

ANOTHER ONE FOR THE READING LIST

As for Ms Shatzky, the Google detective agency tells me that she works as a psychotherapist and a municipal councillor on Bowen Island in British Columbia, where she lives with her husband, three children, and an assortment of animals. Her first poetry book was self-published in 2005 and has been widely sold across B.C. She is presently working on a second poetry collection.